


A Tale Of Two Weevils

by Bawgdan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Eventual Romance, F/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24975769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: Hermione is confident in her goodness. There is no shortage of cruel people in the world. It requires too much energy to be a bad person and this is why Draco is always exhausted.“I wanted to build a fire with our shadow selves and burn there or be erased by the narcotic of limerence when I turned your face into a fire: a love story.”~ Melissa Broder
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	1. Second Year-The Year Of Clarity

_**“they have grown like flowers—bright thoughts along the psycho path that I can pick and gather when the forest feels too dark."~ Cat Marnell** _

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When Hermione discovers something she isn't good at, she is reinvigorated with a sense of purpose. It becomes an obsession until she has perfected it. All summer, she had to make do with no magic, so she took up crocheting. It was mundane enough to be safe, whilst keeping her mind occupied and her parents less anxious about returning home to house gone up into green flames.

Of course, Hermione would never do such a silly thing but her mother said that she is still a child and that, one time, when she was Hermione's age she stuck aluminum foil in the microwave and almost burned the house down. Mrs. Granger insisted that she too was a brilliant child. Hermione had scoffed.

Left alone, Hermione struggled with her purple crochet needle. The loops in her chain stitch were too loose in the middle but perfect at the bottom. She started over for the hundredth time, coming to the same mistake. 

Hermione could not perfect the simplest chain stitch. The summer ended and all she had to show for her new hobby was a series of loose chains in various different colors.

The train ride back to Hogwarts, Harry and Ron were nowhere to be found but her crochet needle and yarn were far more bothersome than the absence of her friends. 

For once in her very short life, Hermione considered conceding to defeat. Perhaps, the dexterity in her fingers simply aren't up for such a meticulous skill. But Dumbledore gave a hasty speech about evolving and never quiet being the same person you were five minutes ago. He vanished with McGonagall—Hermione ate in tepid silence, considered every minute. Holding her breath before she swallowed another bite, hoping that she was changing. 

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Hermione dreams of her mother in their kitchen. Rhiannon plays softly from the living room and they both sing alone, in key. They're both baking a cake for her father. 

It is odd how life turns out. Mrs. Granger often talked about magic and ghosts, how wonderful life would be if all of those things existed. She despised her conventional life. All of her youth she dreamed of one day floating towards the sky to somewhere else. Those dreams stopped when she finished college. However, all that wishing had, in return, given her a very unconventional daughter. 

Magic is real. Ghosts are too. So are vampires and werewolves. The good and the bad.

Though it is terrifying, Mrs. Granger lives vicariously through her daughter and asks in almost every letter if Hermione has met a vampire yet and if they are just like the Anne Rice books.

She rolls onto her side and stares at another failed crochet attempt on the nightstand. Her desire for home is visceral. Hermione shoots out of bed, disoriented by the old smell of her dormitory that isn't anything like her muggle bedroom. No smell of her dad's coffee brewing. Missing the dampness in her pillowcase, where the fabric had absorbed the smell of her shampoo (artificial roses). 

They don't wash their hair in Herbal Essence here. She has to supplement her muggle things when she runs out.

 _"Good thing you ran out. Clearly, that 'Herbal' stuff isn't working."_ Ron had said, blithely, one time when she asked what Ginny used to keep her hair so shiny. It was then she knew that shame can be felt under the skin.

Hermione doesn't bother to fuss with her hair. She mashes it all into a cheap silk scrunchie. Puts on her dad's old navy blue Ralph Lauren sweatshirt with a thick collar. Instead of buttons, there's a faded gold zipper that stops at the chest. It's too big but that's just how she likes it. The end of the sleeves are gnarled. 

She takes the yarn and her crochet needle and stuffs them in a bag. Today, she is going to master this very simple thing. If she can turn a spoon into a lizard, she is highly capable of making a scarf from hand, with one needle. She also brings along her muggle snacks that her parents sent in a package. Skittles and waffle cookies.

The sun looks milky behind a sheet of clouds. Like a silver puddle in the sky. The wind makes her eyes water. It's cool outside, not cold. She stalks the stretch of grass, putting the distance between herself and Hogwarts. As amazing as it is to be a witch, it has complicated her normal life. Hermione doesn't even like the term muggle.

When she steps down a grassy hill, Hogwarts falling out of view behind her, she notices Draco. Alone. Which is rare. Draco is always surrounded by people. He lives in a cloud of noise. Unsure of what to make of this _special occasion_ , she stops on the hill. Draco has been a source of trauma.

She's torn between two thoughts. The first being that she can never properly escape from the noise of Hogwarts and the second is her emotional maturity, that Draco is still just a person. Magic might give him less restrictions than Muggles but, for certain, they both bleed red and they both will die one day.

Ron constantly calls her a Goody Two-Shoes, an overly sweetened, thick, cupcake. Hermione's mother just calls it depth and swears that most men don't have it. 

_"You just lack the range, Ronald."_ She'd said matter-of-factly.

 _"You're really good at understanding people, Hermione."_ Harry defended her when he saw her ears turning red. Ron had only snorted.

Hermione gets closer. Draco never turns around because he is wearing a familiar pair of headphones Hermione saw in a magazine in the normal people world. Draco Malfoy, the hater of all things muggle-like, listening to muggle music. 

Ron would tell her to blackmail him. Harry would probably agree. She wishes she didn't think on a spectrum of what Harry and Ron would do. They often choose to do the wrong thing and are just lucky enough to end up with positive results. Hermione doesn't get by on luck.

Draco doesn't move in her shadow. He stares ahead at the gloomy forest. The wind combs his bangs back over the plastic of his headphones. The cords spiral together, around his face, down his neck, to the CD player sitting in the grass beside him. The minutes blink on the tiny gray screen. An octagon shaped window is on the top of it so that you can watch the CD spin.

Hermione does the Hermione thing to do in a situation like this. She sits beside him. Draco's brows pinch together as he focuses hard on not saying a word. The side of his mouth twitches. He breathes sharply through his nose. Draco doesn't react because she has caught him in the act of doing something repulsively human and vulnerable. She could go and tell everyone that Draco Malfoy, after all this time, is a muggle lover. Hermione snatches the CD case out of his hand.

"What the hell is your problem?" He finally speaks, peeling his headphones from his head. The plastic crackles.

Hermione holds up the Nirvana case. A ribbon of sunlight cuts through the naked baby when the clouds break apart, creating a glare in the plastic. She pretends to inspect it.

"Hmmmm. Looks like muggle trash to me." She drums her fingers on her chin.

Their eyes meet. His eyes shimmer with cold hatred, like rock diamonds in his skull. 

"Could you _kindly_ piss right the fuck off?" He rasps waspishly. Everyone their age has begun to cartoonishly swear. Hermione hasn't said a bad word a day in her life. 

"Smells like muggle spirit." Hermione clicks her tongue. A fake sad boy, is befitting for Draco Malfoy. What could he possibly be so sad about? He quite literally eats the misery of his peers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

"Give it back and go away," he says somewhat pleadingly, but it most definitely is a command. Little does he know, a few bad words from a snobby fake sad boy isn't enough to scare her. Without his entourage, who is Draco Malfoy?

"Or what? You're going to strangle me?" She snorts.

"Yes. I will gladly do your parents the favor and strangle all that pathetic life out of you..."

"And have your filthy rich daddy pay someone to make my body vanish? That's a very messy and muggle-like way to get rid of someone when you could just turn me into a beetle and step on me. How pedestrian of you." 

"It's called a crime of passion." Draco grumbles. Hermione graciously hands him back the case. He snatches it away. With that, she gets up, dusting off the back of her jeans. 

"What does muggle melancholy taste like?" Hermione picks the grass off her bag.

"Huh?" Draco squints.

"You know— _I'm so lonely but that's okay. I shaved my head_." Hermione teases him.

The entirety of his face wrinkles into a frown. Hermione saunters off to find her own spot of solitude.

Draco doesn't get up to threaten her. They mutually agree to unspoken secrecy. Hermione wouldn't gain anything nor get joy out of telling everyone that Draco Malfoy listens to mainstream muggle music. It's like knowing what someone's favorite color is, at least to normal non magical people. 

The etiquette is strange here in this world of magic.

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	2. Slow Muggle Jams

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Before Ginny's wedding (that Harry was _simply_ invited to), Ron and Hermione had one of their bickering fits. Ron couldn't knot his tie right. Ron had too many wrinkles in his pants. Ron wasn't moving fast enough. Hermione nagged. She nags like she is engaging in casual conversation, over tea, during breakfast, on the toilet.

 _You wake up out of your sleep yapping like a rotten chihuahua_ —he'd yelled with a mouth full of toothpaste that stained the shirt she picked specifically so that they could match.

This is her problem. Nothing is ever good enough. She is deeply insecure about being unfulfilled.

 _I just want the best for you, Ronald_ —she'd choked as she struggled with the buckle of her heels.

Hermione wants the best, expects the best, of everyone. Being her best is her love language.

They didn't arrive at the wedding with a better mood either.

Weddings are supposed to be safe happy places. Hermione thought that the environment would soften the bruises of their morning tiff. The top of the wedding tentis charmed to mimic an endless sunset. Ghost birds zip over their heads, vanishing inside of the magical clouds in puffs of glitter and mist. There's even an enchanted breeze that sweeps across the dance floor. Ginny and Harry wanted their wedding to feel like summer. They only found the time in the middle of January to be married.

Hermione never lets her spats with Ron damper her mood. Ron, however, isn't so malleable when it comes to his feelings.

Holding two cups of wine that literally fizzles and sparks like fire works, Hermione does a cute two step through the waves of people moving to Dancing Queen (one of the many muggle songs Hermione introduced to Ginny).

Ron thinks that her chunky red heels make her legs look skinnier. The patterns of roses in her black stockings stretch over her perfect kneecaps. Still, he is angry about his supposed ineptitude.

Hermione holds out the glass of wine to him. Sparks pop over the brim and fizzle out before they touch the floor. Ron doesn't readily take the glass. He gives her that pinched look of his whenever he's trying to fake a smile. Hermione takes a swig from her glass. The alcohol trickles down her throat and explodes into her stomach.

"What?" Hermione asks, holding on to her cheery smile. She hangs her head to the side and squints at him.

"What? What do you mean what?" Ron tries not to yell, tosses back his glass and chugs the wine. It actually burns on the way down. On a better day, he would melt over how good she looks, but they're going on three bad months of 'miscommunication'. Hermione has this sly fox-like smile that irritates him, but is efficient. She's using it right now. Her red lips match the fluffy balls that dangle around her cheeks. Her ugliest pair of earrings. The whole time she'd been fussing at him, she was frying her hair with a flat iron.

"Why do you look so pissy on the happiest day of your sister's life?" She whispers and hisses the _pissy_ part, nodding her head along to ABBA's _'ooo-ooooooos'_.

Ron gets mad again, because it is her fault, after all, that he is having such a shitty day that just so happens to be Ginny's wedding day.

"I look pissy?" Ron snorts, very much pissy.

"Damn right you do." The ' _having the time of your life'_ part of the song is lost on Hermione. More _'ooo-oooooos'_ and she cuts her smile in half.

"I guess I am." Ron smiles when someone claps him hard on the shoulder and gives him a hard shake. He doesn't look up to see who it is, but they leave Ron and Hermione to their silent staring.

Right now, Hermione finds him unattractive with the stubble he refused to shave and his dumb smug grin he never grew out of. She thinks of the ugly faces he makes when they're having sex, then starts to hate how his body has softened. His youth broke at twenty six. The typical things that are disgustingly intimate that you aren't supposed to hate. Hermione's gets a knot in her throat.

He looks victorious when her eyes water, but truthfully, there's nothing more to win. He's had her devotion.

"That's exactly how I felt this morning." It's how he has been feeling for months.

"We're at a wedding! For Christ's Sake!" Hermione stresses _wedding_ with the tendon rising in her neck.

"I didn't start it." Ron ends the conversation by walking away.

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**Author's Note:**

> Y'all remember CD players?


End file.
